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Ex-House Post Office Manager Indicted

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A House post office manager was indicted today for conspiring with legislative officials to use the mailing service for "personal and campaign services," including cashing checks for House employees.

The indictment did not say precisely what role any lawmaker played in the conspiracy, nor did it directly charge any of them with a crime, but it hinted that they sought and received financial favors.

Joanna G. O'Rourke, the former post office chief of staff, was charged with three counts, including fraud, embezzlement and causing an official to misuse public funds. Her lawyers issued a statement saying she has agreed to plead guilty to two lesser offenses and will cooperate with the investigation.

The indictment was returned as the the Justice Department, acting in a separate inquiry of the House bank, cleared more House members of wrongdoing today in a slow process that officials said would not be completed until next week. On Wednesday, Federal agents swept across Capitol Hill delivering the first of hundreds of letters informing lawmakers who wrote overdrafts at the House bank that they did not face criminal prosecutions. Symbols of Ethical Laxity

That inquiry began after it was learned last year that hundreds of House members had written more than 24,000 overdrafts during a 39-month period from 1988 to 1991 without paying interest or a financial penalty.

The House post office and bank scandals have come to symbolize ethical laxity in Congress, a perception that has contributed to an anti-incumbent fever that has sent dozens of legislators down to defeat or early retirement.

Today's three-count indictment against Ms. O'Rourke said she directed subordinates to withhold daily cash deposits generated by the sale of postage stamps so as to have money available to cash lawmakers' checks, a practice prohibited by postal regulations.

It said she back-dated the postmark on a tax return to the Internal Revenue Service, apparently in an effort to avoid penalties for a late filing and directed another employee to provide her with interest free loans of postal money. The indictment did not say whose tax return was involved, or how much she took in loans.

The indictment also disclosed that the grand jury is investigating a practice in which postal employees, operating at Ms. O'Rourke's direction, delivered campaign checks to lawmakers' offices from postal boxes in downtown post offices.

Federal law and House rules prohibit elected officials from receiving campaign checks at their offices, and the use of postal employees to pick up checks was a service provided by the post office to skirt the regulations.

Some people who have closely followed the investigation said that Ms. O'Rourke's cooperation was a turning point for the inquiry, indicating that the investigation was proceeding up the chain of command at the post office and would soon focus on the involvement of lawmakers' personal role in efforts to use the post office to obtain cash, by check-cashing schemes or redeeming stamps for cash through postal employees.

Ms. O'Rourke worked at the post office from 1983 until February of this year. She held a variety of jobs, but became chief of staff and executive assistant to Robert V. Rota, the postmaster who resigned under pressure earlier this year.

In a statement, lawyers for Ms. O'Rourke, Stephen Leckar and G. Allen Dale, said she "engaged in certain transactions which were inappropriate for a Federal manager. She recognizes her responsibility for having done so."

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The lawyers said "she has agreed to plead guilty to two misdemeanor charges and cooperate with prosecutors in their ongoing investigation of House post office employees." She is expected to appear in court next week.

The indictment said Ms. O'Rourke and other unnamed conspirators "would use funds belonging to the United States and would use United States Government employees to perform personal and campaign services for members of the United States House of Representatives."

Jay B. Stephens, the United States Attorney here, who began investigating the postal operation last year, said today that the indictment represented "an important step forward in our ongoing criminal investigation into the operation of the House post office."

So far, five former employees of the House post office have been convicted of criminal offenses in connection with the investigation, but no senior House official or lawmaker has been accused of any wrongdoing.

Earlier this year, Mr. Stephens subpoenaed office records of three Democratic lawmakers, in connection with an inquiry into whether they engaged in a scheme to use their expense accounts to obtain cash from the post office.

Representative Dan Rostenkowski of Illinois, the chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, was the most prominent lawmaker to receive a subpoena. The others were Representatives Austin J. Murphy and Joe Kolter, both of Pennsylvania. Each of them has denied wrongdoing and today's indictment makes no mention of those activities.

But people who have closely followed the inquiry said today that the office account charged by Ms. O'Rourke to send a package to a members' district was sent in behalf of Mr. Rostenkowski, although there is no indication that he was aware of the arrangement.

In the House bank scandal, a tally today by The Associated Press counted more than 100 Representatives who said they had received letters of exoneration from Judge Malcolm R. Wilkey, the Justice Department's special counsel who is investigating the House bank scandal.

The refusal of the Justice Department to say how many lawmakers would get the letters or to identify them created uncertainty in Congress about the process. Uneasiness appeared to be mounting in offices of members who had not yet received a letter, although some lawmakers' aides insisted their exoneration notice would soon arrive.

"I'm sure we are going to get notice in due course," said Robert Hathaway, a spokesman for Representative Stephen J. Solarz, a Democrat from Brooklyn who was identified in a House ethics committee report in April as one of the worst abusers of the bank with 743 overdrafts. "We have done nothing improper."

Some Democrats said privately that any incumbent who failed to get a letter would be a tempting target for their political opponents, eager to capitalize on the bank issue. But others said challengers had already made the most of the issue in races against incumbents who were identified as abusers of the bank.

A version of this article appears in print on September 11, 1992, on Page A00014 of the National edition with the headline: Ex-House Post Office Manager Indicted. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe